


Weakness

by tsunbathing (bluebelle)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Love/Hate, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-06 21:40:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebelle/pseuds/tsunbathing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natalya had always loved him as a figure, but she couldn't love him as a man.</p>
<p>(a 'what if' fic, in which Belarus loves Lithuania first, but then history, doubt, and fear keep them apart)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weakness

  
There had been a time when Natalya had been fascinated by her neighbor. She had been weak then, and very young. She had still believed in fairy tales, and he had seemed like a dashing knight come to save her. He had beautiful eyes, and a gentle voice, and he had gotten off his horse and walked hand-in-hand with her for what seemed like hours because she refused to ride.  
  
When they met, she didn't know what to make of him. He seemed just a year or two older than she was, and she was alone and afraid and assumed he was another enemy. But then he had taken her in, and given her food and a warm bed and told her not to be afraid. He protected her.  
  
He rescued her sister Katyusha as well, and for that he was a hero in her eyes. Natalya was happy to stay at home with her sister when Toris had to leave and fight off some enemy. She could never feel alone if Katya could brush her hair and tell her stories and sing to her in her sweet voice. And then Toris would come home and they would eat dinner together like a real family.  
___  
  
She saw him fight once. The attack was close to his home, and he went to put it down personally. He did that whenever he could, and told her that if he didn't defend his home himself he couldn't really call it "his." It was a matter of pride, he said. Pride was a new concept to her then, but she had admired the way he sat straight-backed in his armor and led his soldiers into battle. His eyes were fierce, and she followed without even realizing her feet had moved.  
  
He was fiercer in battle. He seemed invincible to her, his voice carrying out over the field and his soldiers hanging on his every word. He was strong, too, and none of the enemies he fought seemed to even touch him. She saw now why his people called him a wolf.  
  
After the battle was over, he found her hiding behind a tree. Her knees shook, but it wasn't out of fear. She longed to be strong enough to fight with him. A picture came to her mind, unbidden, of him on a white horse and her on a brown one next to him, both of them with gleaming swords held high.  
  
There was a scratch on his cheek. It bled sluggishly, but it wasn't deep enough to do much damage. She took out her handkerchief and wiped it clean for him. His green eyes widened and he praised her for her bravery. She was scarcely ten then, but she had seen her share of blood.  
___  
  
Whenever Toris was at home, he seemed to have all the time in the world to spend with her. He took her to his favorite places and showed her the magic he saw there. They went fishing together in lakes. They climbed trees and whistled at birds. He taught her about plants and animals, and she soaked in his knowledge and remembered it long after they had gone back home. When she couldn't sleep, she repeated the names of forest plants until her eyelids drooped.  
  
Once he made her a crown out of flowers, the little yellow rue blossoms that were his symbol. He smiled and sang a little song to her as he wove the stems together, and she was transfixed by the steady way his fingers moved. Then he put the ring of flowers on her head and told her how brides wore crowns like this when they married. She would be a pretty bride someday, he told her, and she glowed with pride.  
___  
  
Every time he went on campaigns (and it seemed like he was surrounded by enemies; for a while he barely did anything but fight), he brought her gifts. They weren't large things, maybe a flower or two or something new to eat, but she always treasured them. He had been thinking of her. She pressed the flowers and kept them in a little wooden box he gave her once. It was simple but beautiful, and he had made it himself. Her eyes had lit up when he told her that, and she promised him in a solemn voice that she would treasure it.  
  
She started to think of him as her knight, and she gave him a blue ribbon as her favor. He chuckled as he accepted that, but he did accept it. He knelt so she could tie it into his hair for him. Her hands shook slightly as they touched the chestnut strands, but if he noticed that he pretended not to. Her heart pounded as he smiled and stood again.  
  
He wore that ribbon all the time, and each time she saw it her heart leapt with joy. She hoped this meant that he had accepted her affections, and maybe even returned them, but somehow nothing changed. He only thanked her for the good luck charm and kissed her forehead, and she felt as if she might float up to the ceiling and never come down.  
___  
  
For a while it only seemed to get worse. She wanted him to notice her. As something other than a sister or a friend, and sometimes it seemed like he did, but somehow it didn't feel like enough. And then the Commonwealth started, and she suddenly felt like she was struggling for his attention. He was still fighting all the time, but when he did come back home it seemed like he didn't have enough time for her anymore. There was his new Polish friend, and managing the household, and farming, and practicing, and a weird new love of church (hadn't he once hated going? Hadn't he said it was an insult to his gods?). She felt squeezed out of his life somehow, and yet he never really forgot her. He still brought her gifts, and talked to her, but it wasn't the same way he talked to the Pole.  
  
It was around this time that she started to grow up, to really grow up, and suddenly she looked more like a woman than a girl. She had always been a pretty child, but now her sister called her "beautiful," and her hair needed to be brushed more often, and her dresses needed to be taken in or let out. She accepted these things without complaint. When she caught sight of herself in a looking glass, she did see beauty. She walked tall and wore her new clothes happily, and hoped Toris would notice. She wanted to hear him call her beautiful, too, but he didn't. He didn't comment on her new dresses or her shiny hair, and she tried to convince herself it was because he was busy, or tired.  
  
He seemed tired all the time then. He and the Pole seemed to be off somewhere else fighting most of the time, and every day there were more reports of enemies threatening to invade. That scared her, more than anything else. She wouldn't believe her knight had gotten weak. She couldn't imagine him being defeated.  
  
And then all at once it stopped. Their lands were torn apart, and the household disbanded. It was the brother she had met a few times when she was very young, someone told her: Ivan. She felt numb as she packed her possessions. Was Toris hurt? Why didn't he come back for her? She clung to her sister's hand as they left.  
___  
  
The next time she saw him, he seemed more like a butler than a knight. He welcomed her in, but this time it was Ivan's house, not his own. The smile on his face looked fake, and she didn't offer him one in return. The ribbon she had given him so long ago was threaded through his hair again, she noticed.  
  
He used to call her Nata when they were young, she remembered. Or sometimes Natasha. Now he called her Miss Belarus. "May I take your coat, Miss Belarus? Would you like some tea, Miss Belarus?" came the words. It was wrong, so wrong, to hear him speaking like that. As if he was beneath her. The princess and the knight.  
  
Wasn't that what she had always wanted? A cruel voice asked her that, in the back of her head. But now it brought a bad taste into her mouth, and she glared at him. The hurt in his eyes made her stomach twist, but she tried to convince herself that it was disgust. Here was a man who had lost his pride. She couldn't care for someone like that.  
  
He stayed in the room as she talked to her brother. Ivan didn't seem to even notice him, but sometimes he gave Toris commands. They were always in the form of questions, always asked so pleasantly, in such a sweet voice. Natalya could see the flash of rebellion in Toris' eyes as he poured more tea or retrieved some document Ivan wanted her to look at. The wolf wasn't dead, only caged.  
  
She ignored that, too, and the quickening of her pulse when she thought of him free again. What did that have to do with her, anyway? He could fight all he liked, but she was no longer under the delusion that he would never lose. He had lost to Ivan before, and now here he was, under her brother's boot. Here he would stay.  
  
And even if, by some small chance, he did regain his independence, what then? Would he come to her on a white horse and speak sweet words to her? Would he ask for her hand, or her heart? No, never that. They couldn't give themselves to each other so freely. They never could have, but she hadn't known that when they were younger. The days when she had waited for him by the window seemed lifetimes away.  
  
He walked her out when it was time to go. It was a courtesy he afforded all Ivan's guests, she was sure, but when he helped her into her coat it was like a knife in her gut. He smiled, and the knife twisted. His lips were on her hand before she could react, but his eyes never left her face. "It was lovely to see you today, Natasha," he whispered, and she wrenched her hand away and ran out into the snow.  
  
Her lungs felt tight in the chill air, but she couldn't, wouldn't go back inside. She would wait for the carriage here, and pretend to be ice. Ice didn't feel the cold.  
  
It hurt, hurt so intensely that she thought she was dying, but she knew that if she looked under her coat there would be no blood. Her hand felt burned where he had kissed it.  
  
She allowed herself one glance back, and there he was. He didn't look angry, only a little confused, and he held the door open as though he expected her to come back. She turned away and sealed the pain in her heart with ice.  
___  
  
The union they had formed with Ivan was choking her, too. It wasn't as obvious as with Toris. She was so much better at hiding her emotions, so much better at pretending to be a stone. But she felt it, in the hungry bellies of street children. In the rebellious whispers she heard in her own language on street corners. She wondered if she had revolution in her, but she couldn't do that to Ivan.  
  
Her brother had become more dear to her since the partitions. It had started slowly, because she had barely known him. She didn't warm to him as quickly as she had with Toris, but soon she found herself calling him Vanya and kissing his cheek and speaking to him in fond murmurs.  
  
Ivan was her protector now. Ivan kept her fed and clothed, Ivan had given her some semblance of independence. She forgot the way Toris had done these things for her. She forgot the way he brought her gifts. Now he was practically a servant, no matter how straight he stood or how much fight still lingered in his eyes.  
___  
  
Toris rebelled, several times. Once he held out his hand to her, and promised her freedom. And like the foolish girl she had once been, she trusted him. She fought with him, and won, but then within months they were back under Ivan's control. That was the first time she had truly cursed him, for his false promises. For the cage they found themselves in again.  
  
Her resentment toward him was deepening each day, and yet his affection for her only seemed to grow. He held open doors for her, and bowed ever-so-slightly when she walked through them. It sickened her. The sight of him like this made her feel cold. Dead. He was not a wolf, only the shadow of a puppy, and she couldn't imagine what she had seen in him so many years ago.  
  
During the next rebellion, Toris didn't offer her freedom. He didn't offer her anything, and she didn't ask. The time would come when she would leave her brother's protection, but for now she would wait patiently, like her sister did. She watched him go off to war and come back bruised and bloodied, and the ice closed around her heart.  
___  
  
Each year she drifted further away from him. She no longer responded when he called her name, and it forced him to return to "Miss Belarus." She had hated that name, once, but now she couldn't see why. It was right that they should be apart.  
  
In return she called him Litva, when she addressed him at all. She usually tried to avoid it. His human name (and once she had loved to say it, had loved the feeling of it on her tongue, Toris, Toris) never passed her lips. There was no temptation there anymore, no desire to see him smile or laugh, and no desire to hear him call her beautiful.  
  
He had begun to compliment her whenever he saw her. Her hair was so lovely, he would say, and her eyes were so fine, and her new dress was so becoming on her. He brought her flowers, but she refused them all. They seemed pale and lifeless when she remembered blooms he had tucked into her hair when they were children.  
  
To her horror, her brother seemed to approve of the match. She overheard him once, encouraging Toris to invite her somewhere. When the invitation came she slammed the door in his face, and ignored the way his eyes widened.  
  
Once she had loved those eyes, had thought they reminded her of the forests around his home. Now they seemed the color of weeds, of grass growing on graves and sea-plants clogging up the water. He disgusted her, she told herself again and again, until she could believe it. He had never cared for her. She had never cared for him.  
  
She convinced herself that he had some other motive in pursuing her. He didn't want her now any more than he had centuries ago. He was only a good liar. (She knew this wasn't true, because every emotion shone in his eyes when she looked at him. What she saw in them sometimes scared her, until one day she stopped looking him in the eye.)  
  
Perhaps he thought he could escape her brother through marriage. Perhaps he simply thought she was pretty, but surely there were other pretty girls at Ivan's house. Perhaps he thought her a prize to be won.  
  
It could never be love.  
  
And then, as suddenly as he had been subjected to her brother's rule, Toris was free. He declared independence and kept it. A small part of her, one she thought had died long ago, cried. She read the headline and fell to the floor and wept so violently she thought her body would break. An unexpected joy burst up through her, and she stayed there on the floor, hysterical and confused and happy in a way she hadn't remembered she could be. She no longer knew if she cried for Toris or herself.  
___  
  
Toris' independence began a tidal wave of other such movements, and within a few years most of the nations that had crowded Ivan's house were freed. He had no reason to continue to pursue her, and yet every so often she discovered a letter he had written in her mailbox. There was a thrill in that, the way all things that were forbidden were thrilling. She kept the letters in a drawer in her desk, unopened.  
  
Sometimes she drew one out just to look at it, to see the precise handwriting on the front and feel the weight of it in her hand. Sometimes her fingers even twitched to open one, but she wouldn't allow herself that. Fear held her back. What would he say to her, now that he could say anything?  
  
They rarely met face to face any longer. They were both newly-independent nations, and there was much to be dealt with before they could make social visits. She convinced herself that she didn't want to see him. That she didn't miss him.  
  
His letters beckoned from her desk, and in a moment of weakness she opened one. The words were so clearly Toris that it was as though he was in the room speaking to her, and it even smelled a little like him after he had been out walking in the woods. She hated him for that. For sounding so casual even though they hadn't seen each other in months.  For detailing his days for her like he always had when they were children, and he had come back from playing a man at war.  
  
Tears burned in her eyes as she tried to remember the feeling of ice.  
___

  
He visited her once. Only once, a month after her independence. He brought her flowers, and this time they were her symbol, flax blossoms. It was the flowers that made her open the door, she told herself. Not the thoughtfulness of the man holding them, and certainly not any lingering feelings she might have toward him. Those had died, long ago. The remembrance made her ache.

  
The flowers were also a symbol of domesticity, and apparently Toris had known, because he told her they were meant as a housewarming present. That brought the sting back into her eyes, and she looked away.

  
They had tea together that afternoon, but this time she poured a cup for him. Her new freedom had left her poor, and she suddenly felt that her house was shabby. Her clothes seemed dull, too, and the snacks she offered him tasteless. Perhaps he didn't notice these things, or perhaps it was tact. He commented only to praise, subtly enough that it was believable as truth.

  
When he took his leave she lingered between him and the door, as she had done as a girl when she didn't want him to go. She held onto the cuff of his sleeve. There was that surprised look in his eyes again, and something else she recognized as caution. He didn't know what she was asking from him, but then neither did she.

  
She did not remember falling into his arms. She only knew that he was there, and he seemed so real, and she could almost imagine he was the same boy she had loved once. She buried her nose in his shirt and just breathed, and there was that smell again. It had been home to her once, more than this place had been. The fields and the forests where they would run together. He had been home, he and Katya and herself in their little family. She had wanted to keep that, forever and ever. But then she remembered that she couldn't go back, and she pushed him away with more force than she'd meant.

  
The caution was in his voice as he said goodbye, but there was color in his cheeks and confusion in his eyes that she knew were her fault.  
___  
  
They met only at official functions after that. He called her Belarus now, just Belarus. And why shouldn't he? They were equals, neighbors and independent nations as they were always meant to be.  
  
He looked strong again, and even happy. His voice was confident when he spoke in meetings, and he laughed over coffee with friends and acquaintances alike. Sometimes his smile was directed at her, or he would try to seem casual as he asked her on a date, and the chill came back. It was then that she would pretend not to notice, to be busy scrawling notes or making a comment to her sister. She wouldn't return those smiles. Too much had changed.  
  
Sometimes she was still tempted to go to him. It would be so easy to relent, to give in and have dinner with him. She knew he wouldn't question it. He had never been the type to doubt what was given to him, and if she offered him everything she had been holding back through the years he would take it without complaint. He had always been too patient with her.  
  
She could fall for him again, she knew. He was so sincere. He would show up too early to their dates and kiss her hand and whisper sweet secrets in her ear and she would be done for.  
  
It was worse when he smiled. When he followed her around and brought her flowers. It was worse when he told her she was beautiful. It would be so easy to just reach for him, to just touch his hand. It would be warm. But that would be weakness, left over from another time. Natalya wasn't weak anymore.


End file.
